Bridge to Water
by Skyskater
Summary: He'd leave his legacy as soon as he stepped off that bridge. He'd hurt people. He didn't care. It was a whole new side of suicide, and he had been shamed.


**Suicidal fiction. No, I'm not emo and I won't be committing suicide anytime soon or as long as I live for that matter.**

**Done at home.**

**CHARACTER DEATH THROUGH SUICIDE!**

**If you can guess who this already dead Naruto character is, you win...uhhh...a potato!**

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**Slow, light steps. Down the stairs. Scribbing a hasty note to set on the kitchen table. Out the front door. It is cold outside. He doesn't care. He walks as if in a dreamlike state. He meets nobody on his way to the bridge, and he prefers to keep it that way. Nobody should know what he is about to do. 

The dirt is soft underneath his feet. Dead cherry trees line the road on either side, their gnarled, twisted branches interlacing with each other to form a canopy over him to protect him from the harsh gaze of the stars. Quiet shadows on all sides. He wonders why he is doing this. It seems so selfish, now that he reflects on what he is about to do. He knows there are people that care about him, that he has a child who still needs his love and care. But he does not want to live a life of shame. He would rather die now than die at a ripe old age knowing he had failed.

His shadow is long on the moonlit ground. He looks at it, and wonders if it is possible to have a shadow underwater. He doesn't know, and he doesn't think that later he will really care.

He wonders what will happen the next morning, what his son will do when he reads the note on the table. Will he scream, cry? Or will he rip the note into tiny little pieces and burn the words? He doesn't know, and he won't know, because he won't be around tomorrow morning to find out. A part of him tells him to go back, to trash the note and continue living his life as normal. Another part of him demands that he keep walking, that this is his destiny. He snorts. He doesn't believe in fate. But for a few moonlit hours, he decides, he will play with it. Humor it just this once, because he won't have time later.

His fate lies in his own hands now. He looks out. Far away, he can see the moonlight dancing off the water and now, he really knows he can't turn back. Not now. It's too late for him. It always has been. He knows that now.

Shadows dance along the ground, overlapping with his own. His quietness mingles with the quiet in the air. Soft breaths and his feet on the ground. That is all the sound he makes. He's been trained well; his breathing and steps are barely discernible from the night's offset rhythm.

"'Ouch." A quiet hiss of pain, nothing more. A loose rock is very damaging. He realizes that now. His twisted ankle doesn't matter to him now, though. He won't be alive to feel the aching pain a few hours later, anyway. He has to keep going. He can't stop now, or else there's no telling what will happen later. And he doesn't want anything to screw up his carefully made plans.

He drags himself forward. The trees' branches now seem like a threat to capture him, to keep him in their tunnel. The moon beats down on him, casting his shadow long over the land for everything to see. And the road seems so long now, so very long. His steps are heavier, he is tired, and the pain courses through his whole left leg. And now, he wishes that he had not screwed up earlier, so that he would not have to be doing this now.

It seems that his decision will not let him go. Not heeding his thoughts, his legs move ever forward, leaving footprints in the dust. He continues to breathe, even though he has lost all will to live. He's nearly at the bridge.

He should not be here, he knows. The bridge is not finished yet, and he will not live to see it completed and formally opened. And he thinks that this is why he chose this fate in the first place.

He steps onto the smooth concrete of the bridge. He can feel the waves of cold emanating from the surface and from the waves below. He shivers, involuntarily. It will be so very cold...

Footsteps behind him. He is already at the end of the length of the bridge's completion. It would be so easy to just jump and get it over with, but he does want to know who the heck is here to witness this and how the heck they found out. But it's only one pair of footsteps. He feels sure that, even in his weakened state, that he can take them.

"Dad!" The word is enough to make him turn around, fully. His dark eyes fall upon the slight figure of his son, his one and only child. He realizes what he is doing now, fully. He's letting his son down. But he's too far in to get back out now.

"Why?" His son's eyebrows are knit together in a worried line. He must go, now, before he is too bent with love for his son to go any farther.

"I'm sorry." He steps backward, and now feels only air beneath his feet. He starts to fall, and after what seems like an eternity, hits the water and sinks below the surface. He vaguely sees his son's face over the edge of the bridge, his mouth open in a scream that he can no longer hear.

"I'm sorry," he whispers again. And as his eyes cloud over, as his lungs fill witih the cold darkness, he knows that those two words are the truest he's ever spoken. And he is sorry. Sorry that they are true. He wishes he could show his son how much.

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**This character was never actually formally shown in Naruto...or at least I don't think he was. And yes, he did commit suicide, although I don't think it was like this. I've written about him previously in 'What I Am'. **

**Well, thanks for reading, please review!**


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